User blog:BeastMan14/Punisher: Bullet Points
While the last few efforts to the bring the Punisher to film have been...less than successful (even if I really liked Punisher ‘04 and War Zone), the excellent reception to Jon Bernthal’s turn as Marvel’s tortured anti-hero means there’s hope for this character just yet. So, looks like it’s up to Beastie Boi to bring the world his take on a Punisher solo movie! The Directors Chad Stahleski and David Leitch The director duo behind the fantastic John Wick are excellent at showcasing chaotic, brutal gun battles that never get disorienting, and the general style of their films is very comic book-y, anyway. The Heroes The Punisher = Played by: Jon Bernthal Perfectly capturing everything the Punisher stands for, Jon Bernthal is easily the best live-action depiction of Frank Castle we’ve ever seen, meaning that casting him here should be a no-brainer. |-| Detective Soap = Played by: Micheal Weatherly I've always enjoyed NCIS, so why not have Micheal Weatherly play the eternal punching bag of the New York Police Department? The Villians Bullseye = Played by: Walton Goggins In my eyes, no one can capture the laid-back, mean-spirited personality of the character of Bullseye quite like the underappreciated Walton Goggins can. While I’ll admit that not introducing him through Daredevil is an odd choice, I think Bullseye is just the right amount of crazy for a story like this. |-| Jigsaw = Played by: Freddie Prinze Jr. Strange casting, I know, but according to War Zone director Lexi Alexander, Prinze pulled off a fantastic audition for Jigsaw and only lost out on the part due to bizarre executive meddling on New Line’s part. Prinze also has a love of the Punisher, earning him major fanboy cred. |-| The Russian = Played by: Dolph Lungdren This should be obvious. |-| Nicky Cavella = Played by: Viggo Mortensen Nicky Cavella was one of my favorite villians from Punisher MAX, and given this story’s inspiration from that series and his storyline in it, I’m thinking he would work best as the major antagonist. Viggo Mortensen’s work in Eastern Promises has shown his skill at playing terrifying, smug criminals, meaning he can pull off this role in his sleep. The Plot After another succesful attack on New York’s criminal effort (including a cameo in which Frank riddles Stan Lee with bullets), a tired Frank returns to his safehouse to rest, unaware of events occuring halfway across the city. In a meeting with what remains of New York City’s criminal event, ambitious gangster Nicky Cavella attempts to fill in the power vacuum left by Wilson Fisk by doing the one thing the other gangs can’t: killing the Punisher. In disbelief that he can pull it off, the criminals urge him to explain his plan. Nicky reveals that it’s already underway, as we cut to camera footage sent into all of the major new stations, which showcases Bullseye digging up the bodies of the Castle family and threatening to defile them unless Punisher comes and gets them from him on the very top of an abandoned apartment building bought out by Cavella. (“Get him angry, gentlemen, and he’s much more likely to slip up. And when he slips, he stays down.”) Enraged, Punisher gears up with as much of his arsenal as he can bring, but he is stopped by Daredevil, who urges him not to go into what is so obviously a trap and let the police handle it. Frank states that he doesn’t care if it’s a trap, he can’t let his family be tarnished in such a horrific fashion. Reluctantly agreeing with him, Daredevil demands that Punisher be careful with collateral damage, then leaves. Meanwhile, DA jumps at the chance to take down not only the Punisher, but also Bullseye and whoever else is working with him. She assigns a massive 20-man SWAT team to ambush the Punisher after taking down Bullseye and bringing him down by any means neccessary, and places Detective Soap, the laughingstock of the department, in charge as a means of scapegoating in case the raid fails. Frank’s assault on the first two floors of the building are fast and brutal, with no men left standing. Excited at getting to kill someone this skilled, Bullseye calls Cavella and informs him that he intends to do the contract for free. Cavella is pleased at Bullseye’s excitement, then tells his two top men, Billy Russo and the Russian, to obey Bullseye’s orders. Bullseye assigns Russo to guarding the last floor before the penthouse, and assigns the Russian to the fifth floor. Upon hearing of the SWAT team’s arrival, he decides to handle them himself. Following Frank’s trail of carnage, most of the SWAT team is wiped out when Bullseye detonates the C4 he’d placed on all but one of the elevators, while the handful of survivors reach the penthouse and are effortlessly slaughtered by Bullseye. Soap, who was forced to take the stairs, is spared, and stumbles upon Frank as he takes down all of the men on the third floor. Soap attempts to arrest Castle, but he simply ignores him and keeps moving. Hilarity ensues as Frank alternates between treating Soap with disdain and annoyance and outright ignoring him in favor of slaughtering the criminals on the fourth floor. Sensing an opportunity for a promotion, Soap offers to help Frank take down Bullseye in return for being allowed to arrest him. Frank scoffs (“How ‘bout I let you arrest anybody that ain’t that that piece of scum?”), but a persistent Soap follows him. The duo initally don’t work well together, but they’re forced into a brutal brawl with the Russian on the fifth floor, who shrugs off most of their guns and tosses them around like ragdolls. As the Russian chokes out Frank, Soap breaks a chair over his head, distracting him long enough for Frank to slash his throat and completely decapitate him for good measure. Exhausted, the men take a brief break as Bullseye watches, have clearly enjoyed the fight. It pans over to reveal that he had a homeless family that lived in the building captured in an attempt to understand how and why Frank fights. Killing the father first (“I doubt ol’ Franky had a husband on the side.”), Bullseye then converses with the family to get to know them better. We cut back to Soap as he explains his upbringing to Frank as he patches up his wounds, only for him to tell him to shut up and continue on his way. As he follows, Soap urges Frank to let him arrest Bullseye, so “people can know the system works”. On the sixth and seventh floors, they fight more thugs as Bullseye is revealed to be broadcasting his torture of the family throughout the building, culminating in him shooting the wife dead as Frank kills the last of the thugs. Bullseye then calls Cavella to inform him of his success, only to be chewed out by Cavella after finding out about the deaths of the Russian and the SWAT teams, meaning that the police are after him now. Annoyed, Bullseye hangs up, then makes a mental note to kill him after dealing with the Punisher. Down to his pistols and SMGs, Frank arrives on Russo’s floor to discover Russo and his men locked in a gunfight with Bullseye’s hired guns. Russo reveals that he’s grown annoyed with Bullseye’s antics, and intends to kill him before killing the Punisher personally as a means of impressing Cavella. Taking advantage of the chaos, Frank uses both sides to inflict damage on the other, wiping them both out. In the shootout, Billy shoots Soap, though his vest stops it, and an angered Frank smashes his face against the glass of the windows before hurling him through them, horrifically scarring him. Soap is confused as to why Frank cared about him, and Frank admits to not wanting to see a good man get hurt. Down to his pistol and combat knife, Frank demands Soap wait behind, then confronts Bullseye in the last floor of the building. Upon seeing Frank, Bullseye laughs and admits he reburied the Castle after recording the video. (“I’m messed up, I ain’t that messed up. At least, not for the type of money Cavella was paying me.”) Enraged, Frank attacks Bullseye, and after engaging in a brief gun fight, the two clash up-close in a knock-down, drag-out brawl that completely destroys the penthouse and greatly weakenes it’s fighters. Badly wounded and exhausted, Frank is battered into submission by Bullseye, who pauses to gloat before preparing to stab him through the head. As he lays on the ground, Frank sees a hallucination of Maria, who tells him that this killing isn’t solving anything. He prepares to accept death, but Soap bursts in and draws Bullseye away, forcing Frank to act to save his life by grabbing Bullseye by the leg and tripping him. Once on top of him, Frank goes beserk and beats Bullseye to a bloody pulp. As he prepares to finish him off, Soap stops him at gunpoint, and demands that Frank spare him. When Frank asks what he’d do if it were Soap’s family, he admits to not being sure, but knows that death is too good for Bullseye. Frank raises his knife to finish off a grinning Bullseye, but stops and demands to know who hired him. Confused, Bullseye confesses to being hired by Cavella. Satifised, Frank knocks him out, then leaves him for Soap. (“You better hope we never meet again, Soap.”) As reinforcements arrive, Soap claims to have been the sole survivor who overcame all odds to get his bust, but admits that Frank saved his life at several points. As the reporters praise his efforts, he smiles to himself. Watching this occur on the news, Nicky Cavella sits alone in his penthouse, knowing full-well that he is a dead man. He goes up to get a drink from his bar, but stops when he sees the Punisher sitting at his table. Resigned, Nicky demands Frank kill him, but Frank says that he has something special planned, and that he knows that Nicky got himself promoted to head of the Cavellas by murdering his father, mother, and sister. Terrified, Nicky begs Frank to spare him, only to get knocked out in one punch. Nicky awakens in the darkness, but gets a text from a burner phone in his pocket that says “Look around.” Nicky realizes he’s in a coffin with his father, and screams as a stone-faced Frank walks away from Roman Cavella’s grave, monolouging to himself. (“In the end, nothing changes, ‘cept there’s a little less trash on the streets. Sorry Maria, but that’s a win for me.”) In a post-credits scene, we see a suited man visiting both a cast-wearing Bullseye and a deformed, comatose Russo in the hospital. When Bullseye asks who sent him, the figure sedates him and has some of his men wheel them away, before saying, “You can ask the Big Man when you wake up.” Category:Blog posts